My Favorite Five Year Old

It still sounds unbelievable to hear myself say, Maria's five......... When did five years go by?.......... Was I sleepin'?......... Anyway, I finally took her to get her pictures taken for her big fifth birthday. Of course I spent too much money on prints, but I was really pleased with how they turned out. The final prints were actually cropped, but this was the best I could do with my computer.

What a little sweetheart!

Now on the adoption front, Thursday marked 6 months since Nola was taken from her foster mother. Six months since we have had any kind of update on her. We still have no idea where she is. Our lawyer has finally admitted, he doesn't know where she is either. I didn't hire the agency who offered to find her yet because our agency asked us to wait. Well, we've waited...........four weeks to be exact. It's been almost two weeks since our lawyer filed a petition with the judge asking for information on where Nola has been placed and asking for visitation rights. I have no idea how long it will take to get a response from the judge.
I sent an e-mail to PGN and surprisingly got a response pretty quickly. Here is a portion of the message they sent:

Dear Mr & Mrs Lane regarding the file **************** the file is at Minors unit, and they are waiting for the last resolution that the Judge of the 1st Court has to send to Minors, but is better if you contact your lawyer, they can ask the Judge for the resolution and bring it to PGN or send it by fax. Regards Elisa Soto PGN Information Center.

Well, I'm not sure what that means exactly. It could mean that they finally have their report done and they are waiting for the judge to rule. That would be great! It could also mean that she doesn't really know about the report the judge asked for and is actually in the dark like the rest of us about why this seems to be taking so long. We learned a long time ago that the information from PGN was not always reliable, but I had to do something. It actually gave me some comfort knowing someone in PGN could find our file and at least try to give us some sort of update on it.

Please continue to pray. There are so, so many children who are caught in this mess. There are still over one thousand children and families who need to be united and for that to happen, the political tug-of-war has to stop!

We're praying for you Nola!